CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEW; A Struggle In Exploring Mendelssohn

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Published: April 21, 2005

Light, elfin, mischievous, sparkling. These adjectives could all be applied to the music of Felix Mendelssohn, the epitome of classical music for those who like things pretty and just substantive enough. They did not, however, apply to the Emerson Quartet's playing of it.

On Tuesday night at Zankel Hall, the venerable quartet presented the last of their four concerts this season exploring Mendelssohn's music. The term venerable is in the eye -- or ear -- of the beholder. The Emerson has been playing together for nearly 30 years, but by some measures of human age, they're in their prime: a little grayer, a little more solid perhaps, but not old men.

It's their sound that's let go a little. They're at pains to retain their passion and fire, but there's a measure of aural flab: here a sag in intonation, there a squeak of a bow.

All this was most pronounced at first sight, or rather on first hearing: the opening of Opus 44, No. 3 was heavy, even awkward, as if someone had trodden on the hem of a delicate lace garment. The piece's most pronounced feature was the deliberate dissonance of the third movement. Rather than being a playful episode of a light piece, it set the tone for a teeth-on-edge performance whose intensity created less a sense of the antic than the neurotic.

This approach was far better suited to Opus 80, a darker and more anxious piece from the last year of the composer's life. Paradoxically, this piece seemed more solid than the preceding one, in part because of the singing tone of Philip Setzer on first violin. (Eugene Drucker was the first violin in the other two works.) Where fast passagework in the first quartet had sounded smeared, the Emerson redeemed themselves with fierce fiddling in this one's finale.

Age faced off against youth in the last work on the program: not only because Mendelssohn wrote the Octet when he was only 16, but also because the Emerson was joined by the St. Lawrence Quartet, a young foursome known for its fire, but which also presented graceful, light and unified playing of its own, a sound world quite distinct from the Emerson in the first movement. This is a large-scale work, however, and there was plenty of room for everyone to show off their muscle by the piece's end.